The Marley Concert

Bob Marley is a trishaw God here. The most popular international non-prophet in Sri Lanka would probably be him or Che Guevara. Right now, Che Guevara seems to be winning (judging by trishaw art) but Bob Marley is much better IMHO, having not killed people or run prison camps. Anyways, since he died his sons have been carrying on the reggae/rastafari tradition, including one Julian Marley, who will be gracing our shores this Sunday.

I listened to some of his music and it’s good, you can watch and listen on this post from YAMU. Live reggae is amazing. It’s so bassy and, truly, as the elder Marley said, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

I also think the venue is great, if hard to fill. You can see it above, during the recent Oh My Goat party by BangBang. The Viharamahadevi Park Amphitheatre is across from Nelum Pokuna, near the Horton Place roundabout and it’s a great place, but a bit hard to fill. So I’m hoping that people will pay the Rs. 3,000 for a ticket (4,000 at the gate) that they’re asking for this show. Given the cost of bringing an international band down, plus sound and stuff, that seems about right. So here’s looking forward to Sunday.

I will be there on Sunday, if anyone wants to have a nice chat about the alien master race and reptilians, find the guy wearing the Sri Lanka cricket t-shirt. The code word is “amphietheatruskinny” <- this is a special word that reptilians cannot pronounce… sorry people I have to be safe, and have to know you aren't a repo' trying to get me. See you there!

Good :
* Julian was pretty energetic, and sang a lot of songs.
* Value for money, especially with a pretty good free drink too.
* Started fairly early and ended at a decent time.
* Crowd was well behaved.

Bad :
* TNL advertised that Julian would cover most of Bob’s popular songs. This did not happen. At times, it bordered on ‘boring’. Shame on you TNL for false advertising.
* Low turnout. There were more empty patches than crowded patches in the audience. Not sure why, I expected it to be a full house.
* They ran out of free sunglasses pretty quickly. I was disappointed not to get my pair.